This morning I am sitting at a kitchen table in a quiet upper story apartment in Leeds. I am keeping company with a pair of pigeons and a silent army of stone spires lining the lichen-covered slate rooftops just over the narrow cobble lane below my window. Outside, I hear the morning noise of cities the world over - busses, demolition, the whine of a drill, the slightly frenzied stop and go of traffic.

When I told Amber—my only full-time employee, and an intensely scheduled mom to two hockey-playing teenagers—of our plans to take two weeks in July to walk 100 miles across Northern England, she didn’t really hold back. “That sounds like the worst vacation ever.” We laughed at that, of course. We both understand the allure of spending a week on a tropical patch of sand with nothing but a book and an ice-cold beverage to keep us company. But, even so, I was surprised that a trip like the one Steve and I had just spent weeks planning wouldn’t be universally appealing. I mean, right?